It's a known fact that ads are targeted to Internet users based on their personal search data (It's why I get so many ads for pumpkin pie on my Gmail account) and the report discusses a hypothetical situation; it does not know if advertisers are collecting any information based on a user's sexual orientation.

However, the possible problem researchers discovered is that if certain ads are targeted to a specific group, in this case gay men, and the target audience clicks on the ad link, the advertising company can see where the person came from (e.g. Facebook). If that company only targets to gay men on Facebook, they'll know the user is gay.

The danger with such ads... is that the user reading the ad text would have no idea that by clicking it he would reveal to the advertiser both his sexual orientation and a unique identifier.

Gawker uses the example of a school application:

Let's say you click on that ad for the nursing school that targeted its advertising only to gay men. You fill out an application and mention that you saw their ad on Facebook. The school now knows you're a man who is interested in men, even if you've hidden your sexual orientation using Facebook's privacy settings.

Reached for comment, Andrew Noyes, a spokesman for Facebook said via e-mail, "Our advertising guidelines prohibit advertisers from using user data collected from running an ad on Facebook, including information derived from targeting criteria. For example, we explicitly prohibit them from associating that targeting detail with the data collected from the user in forms they fill out, applications they make, or other interactions on their site."

And your point is...???? I get ads targeted to 54 year old women in Washington, D.C. When I log in in New York, the ads seems to know that, too. There's no scandal - eventually we all learn not to click, or pass around time-wasting apps, or otherwise share more information than we wan to.

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